


Prompt: Among Roses Red and Green

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [86]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tam Lin (Traditional Ballad)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairytale, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Ballad 39: Tam Lin, Codependency, F/M, though much lesser than in other stories of mine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:17:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7466559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Do not go to Carterhaugh.</i> </p><p>That is the warning Wanda has heard all her life, and she does not, still, know why. She has heard the stories, of the ghost of the old warrior that wanders there, made winter’s soldier by the whim of the Cailleach Bheur. She knows that even the hunt skirts the forest’s edges and never follows the deer that dive through the brush into it. Even Pietro, her own dear daring brother, will not dare enter it's woods.</p><p>But she must go to Carterhaugh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prompt: Among Roses Red and Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/gifts).



> Ok, so I've fudged the timeline in this somewhat because I couldn't be arsed to figure it out precisely. If you want to know the precise version of _Tam-lin_ I'm working from here you can find it [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3yTEUnyYDA). Written for a prompt on my tumblr, readable [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/147289189740/okay-but-that-buckywanda-tam-lin-au-with-bucky-as). Other notes are at the end.

**i.**  
_Do not go to Carterhaugh._

That is the warning Wanda has heard all her life, and she does not, still, know why. She has heard the stories, of the ghost of the old warrior that wanders there, made winter’s soldier by the whim of the Cailleach Bheur. She knows that even the hunt skirts the forest’s edges and never follows the deer that dive through the brush into it. Even Pietro, her own dear daring brother, will not dare enter Carterhaugh.

“There is something,” he says, when she asks. “Something in the air, like your spells, like a warning.”

The turn of Wanda’s mouth is doubtful as she replies, “You have never feared my spells.”

“No,” Pietro says. “But we all fear the Fae.”

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
Sewing is easy enough work, calming, and it helps Wanda to have the monotony of it as she works spells into the cloak she sews for Father, the gloves she sews for Pietro, the kirtle she hems and embroiders for Lorna, weaving protection into every stitch. It helps too, when she is simply stitching a shirt - for Father, for Pietro, or for Lorna or herself - to have that monotony as she plans out new spells to work. 

There are many spells she works - many that are her _responsibility_  to work, with Mother dead and herself named heir before even her brother. To weave protection not just into the stitches she sews but around all of their lands, around Genosha Castle, throughout all of Sokovia. Other spells, too, to ensure the fertility of the land, the strength of their herds, the sharp edge of their weapons.

All of them, every last one, Wanda’s duty.

Wanda looks out onto the grounds, onto the green-blooming roses that only Lorna can pull forth from the soil, and knows that, for the winter-into-spring spell of protection and fertility, she needs a rose of red.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
Years before there might have been roses red in their gardens. Only a year before there had still been one bush remaining, but it had faded when Wanda had been too busy with her duties as heir to care for it properly, to feed it a few small drops of her blood.

Now, the only red roses blooming are at Carterhaugh.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
Wanda’s kirtle is green and not red when she leaves the castle for Carterhaugh. Lorna wears green of every shade, and so they always have green cloth aplenty, but Wanda usually wears red and the colour change alone is significant enough that, with her cloak-hood pulled close around her face, people confuse her for one of Lorna’s friends, and not for the Crown Princess.

She rides out to Carterhaugh on the horse Pietro bought for her, picked out carefully for its nature (strong and at least as stubborn as she) and for its colour (a rich dark bay with threads of bloodlike auburn in mane and tail). She still has to name the horse but she does not know if she ever will.

There is a magic, after all, in being nameless.

Wanda rides out to Carterhaugh, through the gardens of roses green and on to the forest with roses red. 

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
She feels a prickle over her skin as she enters the wood, like magic but not, like the magic that had surrounded Lorna when they had found her alone in the woods, the day her mother went missing. (Lorna’s mother was not theirs, no, but she had cared for them when their mother had died, and she had given them Lorna, a sweeter sister than they ever could have hoped for.)

Wanda remembers the magic keenly, but it is gone in moments, sliding away from the spells in her cloak and skirt and shoes, slipping off her skin like a breeze suddenly reined in. Wanda slips from her horse’s back, slips reins carefully off and ties them to a branch where the horse can graze without wandering far.

The horse, at least, senses nothing wrong.

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
The forest feels dark and deep around her, and Wanda wonders if that is part of the magic of it, the magic that calls deer in and warns men off, but seems to acknowledge her magic and leave her be.

The plants here grow lush and strong, pennyroyal and vervain, dock and twisting ivy, goosegrass and coltsfoot, parsley and giant fennel and tansy and a myriad fungi on the fallen treetrunks. The grass too, is lush where it bursts up in patches of sunlight, under the few remaining leaves that fell back in autumn. 

Wanda considers taking specimens but decides against it. There is magic here, magic she knows not entirely, and it is safest to take what she came for, make recompense at the border with blood, and make her own way home.

Her blade shines silver in the light as she goes to cut loose a single blooming new spring rose.

Then a voice comes, from over her shoulder.

“What are you doing here?”

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
The man’s arms are bare, the skin traced over with spiralling patterns of ice and silver, following the contours of his muscles and flowing against them as they swing with his each step forward. His eyes are like ice too, a cooler, paler blue than Pietro’s, a colour as much a warning as anything in his posture. 

Wanda holds her ground.

“I am here for a single rose,” she says. “And once I have that I will be gone from here.”

The man’s laugh is low and throaty, almost a threat, except Wanda is reasonably certain it is born of the same roughness that filled his voice when he spoke before. That of someone long unused to speaking.

Wanda flips the blade in her hand, holds her ground as the steel presses cold against her wrist. Risks are weighed and considered - this man, almost certainly Fae, must be offered something to receive anything in return. Wanda considers, Wanda weighs the risks. A name, given and owned and known, has power, and given willingly has more. 

“I am Crown Princess Wanda Maximoff from Genosha Castle. I am here for a rose that I may cast a spell for the safety and security of our lands, and then I will be gone. Who, may I ask, are you?”

There is half a smile in the man’s expression as he watches her. “I am the one on who’s lands you trespass,” he says. “You shall take no name from me.”

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
Wanda is allowed to leave the forest of Carterhaugh with her rose once she makes recompense, the man who is as alike to the winter’s soldier of the stories as Pietro is to the speeding winds when he runs that for all she knows he might _be_  winter’s soldier watching carefully from just within the boundary.

The magic that rings Carterhaugh, binding magics and boundary magics and magics Wanda cannot yet piece apart, sings louder with him so close.

 

* * *

 

 **ix.**  
Two days after the successful spell, Wanda rides out again. 

Winter’s soldier waits at the edge of Carterhaugh.

“Why would you trespass here again?” he asks, and Wanda can almost hear the curious touch of a smile in his tone.

Wanda tugs back her hood, looks him in his wintry eyes. “For you,” she says. “Something keeps you here.”

 

* * *

 

 **x.**  
The binding magics on winter’s soldier, on the lands and boundaries of Carterhaugh are so much as to be dizzying to Wanda. She can make spells and work spells, can sing up a storm and scream a protection but her magic is instinctive or it was learned at her mother’s knee. Seeing another’s work arrayed before her like this… Wanda does not know where to begin.

“Rest,” says winter’s soldier, watching as her scarlet magic gently sings apart and feels out thread of the Cailleach’s icy blue and grey spellweave. “Or at least have something to eat, Crown Princess Wanda of Genosha Castle.” He pauses, blinks. “Offered freely, of course.”

Wanda barely looks away from the icy spellweave she is painstakingly learning. “Is it food of the Forest People?” she asks. “For I must not eat of that. I have responsibilities other than this choice to try to help you.”

“It is human food,” winter’s soldier promises. “I will pick you an apple with my own two hands.”

 

* * *

 

 **xi.**  
Wanda slips away to Carterhaugh when her duties permit.

(This is not, she must admit, as often as she would like.)

The magics there are special, Fae-made things, bindings and boundaries, brisk as winter’s chill and as slip-sticky as ice.

“Do not exhaust yourself,” winter’s soldier says some days. “I have been here many years and I will be here still more yet. Come, sit with me. Tell me of what happens outside of Carterhaugh.”

Wanda settles beside him on soft lush grass. “How many years have you been here?” she asks. “There was a great battle, many years ago, between humans and Fae, but you may know of it already.”

“I saw part of it,” winter’s soldier says. “Tell me something newer.”

 

* * *

 

 **xii.**  
“Where do you go?” Pietro asks, when she returns from Carterhaugh one day. His tone is mild, curious, but Wanda can see in his eyes just how much he wants to know. Her hand is gentle on his wrist.

“I am safe,” she promises. “You do not need to worry.”

Pietro’s smile is wide and warm. “I always worry,” he says. “We are twins. There is magic in that.”

“Carterhaugh,” she says. “I go to Carterhaugh and study the magics there.”

Pietro is quiet. Wanda knows _why_. Why he is quiet, why he asked, why he wants so much to know. Usually, when she has spare time, she spends it with him or with Lorna or with them both, siblings enjoying each other’s company without the burdens of their responsibilities, just for a little while. That she would not join them, that she would seem to avoid _him_ , her twin… it is a jarring uncertainty to him, after he has allowed her to pull magic from him so many times.

“I am safe,” she promises. “And I only go when I have time enough to travel and learn and return. I will still spend time with Lorna and with you.”

His fingertips tap gently on the heel of her hand. “And you are safe?” he says. “You promise?”

Wanda lets the scarlet of her magic shine from her eyes, drip from her fingers, bind her words to what she knows as true. “I promise.”

 

* * *

 

 **xiii.**  
Winter’s soldier is, oddly enough, a gentleman. For all his of-ice eyes and his ice-spelled, charm-bound arms he is more human than the Fae Wanda first thought him to be. _Maybe,_ Wanda considers, _he is truly winter’s soldier, the Tam-lin, the warrior Bucky Barnes stolen from his Howling Team by Winter’s Queen._

 _Maybe_ , Wanda thinks. _Maybe Winter’s Queen, the Cailleach Bheur froze even **time**  to bind Barnes to her side, to have him act as Guardian of Carterhaugh._

“Maybe,” winter’s soldier says evasively, half apologetically, when Wanda asks. “But it is not my place to tell.”

 

* * *

 

 **xiv.**  
What it _is_ his place to tell is surprising. When Wanda is resting, piecing apart and putting back together the spells of Carterhaugh in her mind he tells her tales of his time before he was winter’s soldier, of his time spent with his one great childhood friend (always “my friend” or “absolute _idiot”_ said with a beaming smile that makes Wanda catch her breath).

(Wanda remembers, when riding home, that there is a magic in giving out names.)

His stories are many and varied, and given in exchange of each of her own. If he _is_  Fae (and Wanda is more and more sure he is not) the balance is being maintained, though he has so much information on her it could be ruinous were he not the gentleman he proves to be, over and over.

 

* * *

 

 **xv.**  
Six months after meeting winter’s soldier Wanda rides to Carterhaugh carrying a basket.

“It has been a half-year,” she says, setting the basket down before winter’s soldier. “You have offered me food freely and so I gift it freely in return.”

They sit on lush grass in a grove of oaks, bowered over by red-blooming roses, sharing the wine and cheese and bread and grapes Wanda brought. “And an orange,” she says. “From far to the south. Have you ever had one?”

Winter’s soldier has not, it turns out, and get juice everywhere in trying it.

“It is messy!” he says laughing, “Delicious, but messy!”

“The mess,” Wanda says, and she can feel a sticky droplet of juice at the corner of her mouth, “is half the fun.”

Winter’s soldier stretches out a hand, catches the smear of juice with his thumb. His thumb is roughly callused, Wanda feels, as it grazes lightly over her skin, and she shivers. Slowly, almost carefully, he moves his thumb back, sucks the juice from the pad.

“There was juice,” he says unnecessarily after a half-awkward pause. “I thought-”

Wanda sees his eyes flicker to her lips. Wanda says, quietly, “Soon it will be first harvest.”

Winter’s soldier pauses, nods. “It would be, wouldn’t it? May it be bountiful.”

(His eyes, once more, flick to her lips. Wanda knows this could well be the wine, be the magic of Carterhaugh, or that of freely given exchange, but what she says is true all the same.)

She says, softly, “There are ways to assure it will be.”

 

* * *

 

 **xvi.**  
There are ways, there are many ways. Wanda learned of all of them at her mother’s knee, taught to memorise the words even before she fully understood all of the meaning.

Usually Wanda would sacrifice seven drops of her blood to the deep well in the bowels of Genosha Castle, give unto the waters so the waters gave unto the crops and the crops in turn gave unto the people.

 _This_  way, though, kisses and kisses, kirtle shed, bare skin on lush grass, skin pressed to skin pressed to skin. Wanda has never tried this way before.

(In truth: there has never been anyone she cared to try this _with.)_

She can feel the calluses of winter’s soldier’s hands over the soft skin of her thighs, climbing slowly up her body, skimming the inside of her things and making her shiver. His other hand, exploring up to her waist, her belly her breasts as her hands explore him in turn.

His ice-eyes are questioning but certain as his fingers delve gently, slowly, carefully betwixt her legs.

“Are you sure?” he asks, and Wanda can feel the magic she called around them, pulsing like life.

“Of life, for life, to life,” Wanda says, invoking the spell. “I am certain.”

Winter’s soldier he may be, Wanda thinks, but his lips are not cold against hers.

 

* * *

 

 **xvii.**  
Wanda’s hair is a dark cascade over green grass when they are done, the magic she called bound strong and with purpose sent out to fill the fields before harvest. Rose petals, as rich a red as blood, dot her hair, and winter’s soldier rests between her legs, his head on her breast, ice-cool spelled fingers trailing over the skin of her arm.

“The magic,” he murmurs softly, breath warm on her bare skin. “How does it work?”

Wanda’s eyes are half-closed, her fingers tangling in the locks of winter’s soldier’s hair. “The spell we just worked?” she asks. “It is not so complex.”

 

* * *

 

 **xviii.**  
They stay there like that, soft silence only broken by soft questions and soft answers. It is late in the day that winter’s soldier pushes himself up and says, almost sadly, “You should be heading home soon, Crown Princess, back to your castle before you are needed again.”

His ice-spelled hand still trails patterns over the skin of her arm. “I set the day aside,” Wanda says. “Made reasons and time and space for this.” She smiles, a warm golden smile. “And after what we have done you may call me Wanda, if you will give me a name I may call you by.”

Ice-spelled fingers tap over her skin. “I have no name,” he admits softly. “That was taken from me when I was bound to Carterhaugh.”

Wanda’s hand moves across her body, fingers interlink with icy fingers. Her eyes meet his, watch carefully before she speaks. “What about Winter?” she suggests. “Just until I can unwork your bindings?”

 

* * *

 

 **xix.**  
Time passes gently for days after that. Wanda rides home, her basket empty of food but full of Carterhaugh’s red roses and the herbs which grow so freely there, gifted to her by Winter. She spends days at home, managing the castle, spending time with her siblings overseeing the harvest to be brought in.

Wanda takes some of the first harvest with her when next she goes to Carterhaugh, gifts the food to Winter who takes it gently, seeming uncertain.

“Princess Wanda,” he says, holding the basket gingerly in his ice-spelled hand.

“Winter,” she says, warmly, with a smile. “The harvest was bountiful.”

There is a moment of uncertainty, a half-fleeting blush and then, smilingly, almost teasingly: “I am glad. Shall we share the fruits of our labours?”

(They both smile, both laugh, both sit gladly in the clearing, sharing food as Wanda threads apart the spells of Carterhaugh and learns how to unmake them.)

 

* * *

 

 **xx.**  
With the harvests being brought in Wanda has many duties back at the castle. Stitching shirts is easy, she has done it since she was small, as Mother taught her magic. But then there is accounting, allotting each harvest it’s place, calculating each tax and tithe, ensuring the farms retain enough for winter while paying their dues. 

(There is magic, too, that Wanda must prepare, one to ask the winter to have nature’s strength but not nature’s cruelty.)

She is the Crown Princess, has been named so since she was ten-years old and Mother died and her magic proved best suited to inherit. Lorna’s mother had stood in her stead for several years - past when Wanda was old enough to do the magics, standing in her stead until she vanished one day, without any kind of trace - but Wanda was still Crown Princess. There were still duties that were hers and hers alone.

“You have been to Carterhaugh,” Father says, when she goes to him with the Harvest Report. She is still feeling a little dizzy after her waking, the poor rest of one not-quite well (she is quite aware of the likely _why_ ). “The guards saw you return with rose cuttings.”

Her head bows in a nod. “We need the red roses for spells, and have none here any longer. They started to die when Lorna’s mother did. I ensured there was no place-debt.”

Father looks older than ever, watching her. The crown has always rested stiffly on his head, the iron band simply made and warped by his magic to rest a little off-kilter. “Be careful in Carterhaugh, my daughter,” he says, his hand reaching out to cover hers. “We have lost too much to Fae magics here. I would not lose you too.”

Wanda takes her father’s hand in hers, lifts his hand to press a kiss to his knuckles. “I am learning the magics of Carterhaugh,” she says. “It is not, right now, a threat to me.”

 

* * *

 

 **xxi.**  
They are playing chess when Pietro says to her, “Something is different. What’s changed?” 

Lorna, at the windowseat, does not look up from her stitching, is just out of hearing. Wanda slides her queen’s rook forwards, threaten’s Pietro’s bishop, thinks how to tell her twin of this.

Pietro speaks for her, sliding out his knight to ward off the rook. “The harvest was bountiful,” he says. “Magically so. But I don’t recall you going to the well, and nor does Lorna. There are other spells, I remember Mother teaching you the seven, but there is only one which could cause…” he trails off, gestures to Wanda, “your symptoms.”

“It is my business,” Wanda says. “I will handle it.”

Pietro smiles, wide and knife-sharp. “You are my twin,” he says. “I don’t doubt you. But either he must come forward and wed you, or Father will realise and arrange something.”

“There are other options,” Wanda says quietly, eyes on the chessboard. “Even if I am loathe to use them, they are there.” She moves her rook back a space, shakes her head. “He cannot come forwards besides,” she says. “He is spelled, bound to a place. He cannot come forwards until he is unbound.”

Pietro’s hand reaches out, cups her cheek lightly. “If you cannot unbind him from Carterhaugh,” he says, softly, sadly. “I will help you in any way I can.”

Wanda knows he does not mean only magically. Her hand takes his, her head tilts into his touch. “It is my responsibility,” she says. “I will do as I must.”

 

* * *

 

 **xxii.**  
Wanda rides to Carterhaugh on the horse Pietro gifted her. She knows the binding spells now, knows she cannot undo them, not in their entirety, cannot free winter’s soldier and let the father of her child name himself to Court.

(There is something else she can do, though, with the herbs of that place, pennyroyal, parsley, giant fennel, tansy. She knows herbcraft as well as she does magic.)

She sings apart the threads of the spells with her scarlet as she searches out the herbs she needs. She does not call for Winter’s presence.

(He finds her anyway.)

 

* * *

 

 **xxiii.**  
Ice-spelled fingers wrap around the pennyroyal she was about to pick, carefully pluck it up, pass it to her. “I thought,” he says, and his tone is gentle even as his voice is still rough (Wanda does not think he speaks but to her). “I thought you had the herbs you needed.”

Wanda sets the pennyroyal in her basket, by the tansy, the parsley, the giant fennel. “I thought I did too,” she says. “But alas. I will pay the recompense.”

Winter’s hand is gentle on her cheek, even as it is cold. “I know the herbs,” he says. “I have had time to learn them all, learn to speak to them and ask their uses.” His ice-eyes are more like water as he watches her, as his spelled-cold thumb grazes over the skin beneath her eye. “Why?”

There are many reasons. As many as there are harvest spells, Wanda thinks. She shrugs. “I am Crown Princess. I have a duty. I am our Court’s magic-worker, and have no heir, cannot risk my life. I cannot unbind you, yet, so I cannot wed you, and I cannot shame my line. I will not wed whomever Father finds for me, I will not bear and birth a child alone.” She looks down at the herbs in her hands, in her basket. “There is no option left.”

Winter’s hand does not move from her cheek. “Unbind my words,” he says. “So I can say more than is my place to tell.”

 

* * *

 

 **xxiv.**  
Wanda’s eyes close, when Winter’s words are unbound and he tells her the way to undo it.

“It is an old spell,” he whispers. “And the secret was bound with me when Winter’s Queen first spelled me here.”

“Why did you not tell me?” Wanda asks, and she is tired, so tired, of the tricksy laws of Fae magic, of hiding her condition, of making reason for each ride to Carterhaugh. “Why?”

“The conditions,” Winter says. “The rules of the spell. I could not tell you until you said you wished to unbind me, until you had the means to.” His ice-hand is gentle on hers. “It is meant to make it harder to unbind me.”

“A nettle-shirt,” she says. “At full moon, and you transform thrice before becoming yourself and free.”

“Wolf and bear and lion,” he says. “And you must not let go.”

Wanda’s voice is calm even as she says, “Your teeth could kill me. Your strength, your claws. This could mean my death, and that of the child I carry.”

Winter’s voice is sad. “That is why it is the spell,” he says. “There are none that would risk it.”

Scarlet flashes in Wanda’s eyes. “I would,” she says. “I have been training Lorna, I will train her more while I make the shirt.” She stands picks up the basket, casts the herbs she’d picked out around her. “I meant to free you when I first returned, I mean to still. I will have the shirt when next you see me.”

“You must make it yourself,” he says. “Every thread, every stitch, every cut.”

“I know,” Wanda says, lets her hand cup his cheek for once this day. “I will return with the shirt,” she says. “And I will make you free.”

 

* * *

 

 **xxv.**  
Every thread, every stitch, every cut. Wanda beats out the nettles herself, twists out the fibres into thread, puts them to loom to make the cloth. All the while she sits with Lorna, teaches her the magics in urgency.

“You are worried,” Lorna says, “if you are teaching me so. Should I worry also?”

“I hope not,” Wanda says, pushing the shuttle through the threads. “But that is only hope.”

Lorna nods, spins her perfect iron needle between her fingertips without it piercing her skin. “I will work magic for your luck,” she says. “That I do not have to.”

Wanda works on at the loom, weaving a shirt Lorna knows is not to any measurements of family. Lorna says not a word more.

 

* * *

 

 **xxvi.**  
The shirt is barely done by full moon, the threads of one sleeve gone odd and imprecise, the weave not quite perfect. Wanda rides out late, before the moonrise but too late to return within daylight. “Do not tell my father,” she tells the guards. “I will be back by morning, with a great gift for him to see. But you must not let him know.”

Pietro sees her off, holds the blood-touched horse he gifted her. “To Carterhaugh?” he asks. “To unbind winter’s soldier?”

Wanda tucks the package of the nettle-shirt to her saddle, rests her hand on it. “I have the means,” she says. “And better this than any other option.”

Pietro climbs the steps of the mounting block, presses a kiss to his sister’s cheek. “May magic be your luck,” he whispers. “May you return to us.”

Wanda rides off, hoping exactly the same.

 

* * *

 

 **xxvii.**  
The shirt is imperfect, Wanda knows. Knows one sleeve, slightly rushed, could mean the failure of this attempt, could mean Winter is bound twice over by the Cailleach Bheur with this winter coming toward them. Could leave Winter part-bound to Carterhaugh, never to escape.

“Better this,” he says, taking the shirt from her, “Better almost freedom than none at all. Better freedom now than after we have too many regrets.”

The stand in the clearing, the clearing where they talked, where they laughed, where they had worked magic. Wanda can feel, beneath her dress, where her belt presses a little too tightly on the curve of her belly. “You are to be unbound,” she says. “Do you know your name again, yet?”

It is not the cold of the darkening evening that makes Winter shiver, she thinks. “James,” he says. “I was James Buchanan Barnes. My friends called me Bucky.”

(Wanda knows, the next nation over, that they found their frozen-in-time Captain, her Winter’s Captain.)

“If we unbind you,” she says. “There may be one yet in the world remaining you might know.”

Winter shakes out the shirt, sees the imperfect sleeve. “It will be enough,” he says, and dons it. Wanda’s arms wrap around his middle, her face presses to his collar, her magic binds around them, binds her to him as the spells make him shake.

“Be winter’s soldier no more.”

 

* * *

 

 **xxviii.**  
The spell shakes through him, and he vanishes into thick fur, the scent of wolves, great fangs snapping by her ear. Wanda holds tight. Wanda does not let go.

 

* * *

 

 **xxix.**  
The only reason, Wanda thinks, the shirt does not tear as he becomes a bear is because it is a part of this magic, driving it, making it be and unbind in the first place. The fur is thick and coarse and dark against her face, limbs huge, but Wanda does not let go.

 

* * *

 

 **xxx.**  
The lion is worst of all, the breath stinking of meat, great razor sharp claws, thick fur, the mane as dark as Winter’s own hair. Wanda locks her arms, lets her magic swirl around her and give her strength, and does not let go.

 

* * *

 

 **xxxi.**  
Wanda can see the spellwork undone, the blue gone from his arms, only grey spiralling over the muscles of his left-

“It is not spelled,” he says. “It is cold. But it is not a binding.”

The nettle-shirt is torn where it was made to stretch by the magic, hangs off him in rags. “We must go,” Wanda says. “Before Winter’s Queen realises.” She swings her cloak from her shoulders, wraps him in it. “Can you ride?”

The smile he gives is laughing, joyful, the one that makes Wanda catch her breath. “Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

 

* * *

 

 **xxxii.**  
It is not quite dawn when they return, so much of the night gone to travel and to transformations, to the unbinding of the spells that bound him. James sits astride her horse (“I do not know that I am Bucky, yet, but I am winter’s soldier no longer”) just behind her. His ice-touched arm (no longer ice-spelled, ice-bound, but still touched by winter) wraps gently around her belly as she guides their horse home.

Pietro, sleepless, waits at the gate, holds the horse, helps them down.

“You have unbound him, then,” he says, and there is something of pride in his smile as he looks to Wanda. “Let us see what Father has to say.”

 

* * *

 

 **xxxiii.**  
It is months later, almost a year, when the awoken Captain, their James’ Captain makes a visit. Their Magda (named for the twins’ mother) is as alert as Wanda was at her age, near a month ahead of the curve and she is shared between her parent’s laps, or those of her aunt and uncle, her grandfather, given bent spoons to play with and to practice her own magic on, loved always.

As they wait for James’ Captain, Wanda’s hand finds his. “Are you ready?” she asks. “You are not winter’s soldier any longer, but are you yet Bucky?”

He is quiet, pensive, as he watches out the windows, lets Magda play with the ice-touched arm that fascinates her so. “I don’t know,” he says. “Even unbound... I don’t think it’s my place to say.”

“You are loved in any case,” Wanda says. “And if this Captain is your friend as you said, the dear ‘absolute idiot’ then he will understand.”

They tilt their heads together, watching, as Magda’s fingers pull at the skin of his ice-touched arm.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've purposefully changed some things around in this because while its a great ballad it doesn't make quite so much sense as a story unless I make these changes. Primarily these changes are the stretching out of the timeline, the inclusion of humans working magics, and a slight change to how the spell on Bucky is unworked. 
> 
> The nettle-shirt note is from a Grimm's Fairytale, which I knew as The Seven Swan Brothers (however, when I searched for it, it is apparently _[The Six Swans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Swans)_ so apparently I was told a corrupted version), in which seven princes are turned into swans and their sister must, mutely, weave seven shirts from nettles before the year is up in order to turn them back to human form. She is very nearly burned at the stake because her muteness means she cannot defend herself from accusations (which I felt was a bit much for this story so I did not add the muteness clause for Wanda) however because the final shirt was incomplete the youngest brother was left with a swan's wing in place of his arm, which is where Bucky's ice-touched arm comes in.
> 
> The herbs mentioned - pennyroyal, parsley, giant fennel and tansy - are all, if I recall rightly, abortifacients - that is: herbs which can cause a miscarriage. Given the approximate social systems of the period of the ballad - and it does have three verses which imply Janet is seeking to abort the child: 
> 
> And she is down among the weeds  
> Down among the thorn  
> When then appeared Tamlin again  
> Says, “Lady, pull no more”
> 
> “What makes you pull the poison rose?  
> What makes you break the tree?  
> What makes you harm the little babe  
> That I have got with thee?”
> 
> “Oh I will pull the rose, Tamlin  
> I will break the tree  
> But I’ll not bear the little babe  
> That you have got with me”
> 
> \- it felt fitting to have the magic-working Wanda, in this, make this decision, given her status, her duties, so on and so forth.
> 
> Some of the various things, about exchange, about the power of names and that which is freely given, are drawn from various aspects of folklore, both to do with Fae and not. I picked ones which I felt worked best in concert for the magic system of this story.
> 
> Lorna is here because Lorna is here and that is that. In the original ballad Janet had no mentioned siblings, so adding Pietro was already in violation of that, but I decided to go full royal Maximoffs and, in my book, that means including Lorna. So.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this and that you'll leave comments!


End file.
